


your hands in the fire

by orphan_account



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Deaths, Funerals, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 20:47:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20346478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Once, George remembers, Meredith saideverybody is leaving and everybody is dying!The worst part is that she was right.





	your hands in the fire

**Author's Note:**

> This is really angsty. I really don't know where this came from. I have a lot of _what if George/Lexie/Mark etc etc didn't die_ ideas, but this is just... idk.  
Title from _Into the Fire._

At the nth funeral in his adult life, George has recognized the signs. The twist of mouths to stop traitorous tears. The trembling voices. How hands tangle together in a careful knot, as if unknotting fingers will lead to the whole world unraveling and falling apart. He's recognized it because he's used to it.

He looks at the grass and realizes that it's begun to rain. It's cliche and stupid and George almost wants to start laughing before he realizes the strange croaking sound is him trying not to fly apart. 

But, he realizes, a long time ago, it already had. 

  


His dad’s funeral is long and drawn out. They're Catholic, or at least supposed to be. George hasn't actually prayed since the night before the MCATs, where he'd been so keyed up that it had seemed okay at the time. He doesn't go to church or anything - there's too much time spent pushing people around and working on diagnoses and thinking about the after. 

George is not grieving. Not anymore. His dad’s dead, and maybe he's not sure how to live in a world around him, but he isn't grieving. 

His mom’s sobbing, shoulders that held up to three boys all those years finally broken down. George reaches for her, amidst the pale spring sun, but his brother gets there first. An understanding passes between them and George turns to the casket being lowered into the ground. 

There is a part of him that is angry at Bailey and the chief and his dad, even though there's probably some stupid law that says you can't be angry at the dead. It's probably a measure of being a good Catholic. 

George never claimed that. He never will. 

  


When he gets to Meredith’s place, Izzie is eating a bowl of mint chip ice cream and flipping through a cookbook. Alex is yelling at the TV. Maybe he'd shown up in the window of time that George had been gone. George doesn't exactly care. 

What surprises him the most is Cristina sitting on the kitchen counter, ankles crossed, well in deep with an anatomy textbook. George passes by her and grabs the coffee cup with the lightsaber from the first cupboard. Cristina’s eyes flick down at him and George can almost hear the gears clicking in her head. 

He knows she knows where he'd been. He knows something about her now, her dad, and it's given him a little leverage. Theoretically, whatever insult she hurls at him, he can hurl that right back. 

But he won't. 

He won't. 

At some point, Cristina hands him a cup of coffee. It is hot and bitter and tastes like what life is supposed to be. All hard edges and tiredness and death and holes. 

“When's your shift?” he asks her, and she says, “In the morning.” 

They could go out drinking, drown their sorrows in malts and acid and everything in between. It's medicine in the best form. 

They could. Cristina rolls off the counter, places a tentative hand on his shoulder. It's fleeting and then she's gone in the shadows of the house. 

It's late, and the coffee cools between his shaking fingers. 

  


He doesn't end up going to the army office. Cold feet. Or something that he thinks might be cold feet but is probably just him being fucking scared to his bones. 

Izzie doesn't die. She almost does, Meredith says in the half moments later that night, after the surgery. When George goes to see her, she looks at him blearily, eyes filmed over. She tells him of rich magenta fabric, a prom dress, seeing the elevator open but no one being there to greet her. 

There's a part of her, she whispers, that thinks she expected Denny. George wonders if it all hinged on that - had she pulled away because there was no one waiting if she died? He doesn't believe in an afterlife, not really. Believes in flat lines and time of death, because it's concrete and there. 

Izzie makes a mistake. She makes a mistake and leaves. 

And George wants to say something stupid like _mistakes_ _aren't who you are _because God knows how many he'd made, but it's a sappy phrase that belongs in greeting cards, not in someone’s actual life. 

She passes by him the first time she comes back, doesn't say anything when he asks why she didn't respond to his voicemails. Izzie walks by him, fast and fleeting, and George catches a tear slashing down her cheek. 

That's pushing it, really. She's gone the next day, like a wisp of air, a gust of wind. There's a part of him that might be shattered but he's not putting it back together. Because putting it back means remembering that Izzie Stevens has left and doesn't want to be found. 

They don't talk about her. Meredith, Alex, Cristina, no one, likes she's been a black mark and erased into oblivion. Their records are clean of her. 

And it's only when they're eating lunch with April, Jackson, and Lexie five months later and talking about stupid intern stories and Meredith is half-giggling, saying something about a party and flares. She says_ Alex, George, Cristina, and I - _

It takes a full minute for George to find the gap, but he doesn't bridge it. Izzie Stevens is a pale, smudged, whisper at this point. There's nothing more to say. 

  


There have been more after that. Blood splatters against hospital tile, bullets sounding hollow in the air. His best friend, crushed under a plane -- her one true one gone. Starcrossed. 

The one who was meant to last -- the one the five _ (five, four, three) _of them had smirked about in on-call rooms and bars, alcohol under their tongues. The one who had built a house and had dreams bigger than himself.

And her. Her who they'd all kept on the back burner until it'd been too late. 

  


George blinks. He's back and it's still fucking raining.

He stands there, watching Meredith bite her lip, lipstick smearing across her teeth, Alex’s hands turning into fists. 

George watches Jackson stare unblinkingly, and knows that after this is all over, he’ll break into a million pieces, alone. George knows because that's the only thing he can see -- what did Cristina call it? Seattle Grace Mercy Death? 

That's what this is - that's what this has ever been. 

  
  



End file.
